Quotes from John Wyndham

Some quotations," said Zellaby, "are greatly improved by lack of context.

If you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either.

Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.

Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.

Knowing makes all the difference... It's the difference between just trying to keep alive, and having something to live for

I shall pray to God to send charity to this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate. I shall ask Him if is indeed His will that a child should suffer and its soul be damned for a little blemish on the body....And I shall pray Him, too, that the hearts of the self-righteous may be broken...

Why should I? I've done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed - I am only beaten

There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes.

Why should they be afraid of us? We aren't hurting them,' she broke in. "I'm not sure that I know why,' I told her. 'But they are. It's a feel-thing not a think-thing. And the more stupid they are, the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different –

It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.

Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith.

We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall -- but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.

If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does.

Most people […] prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one, it's always due to something or somebody else

You'd expect her to see reason,' he muttered. I don't see why. Most of us don't - we see habit. She'll oppose any modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously trained feelings of what is right and polite - and be quite honestly convinced that she's showing steadfast strength of character. . .

Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive—yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk—the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable.

The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise.

after all, what is a planet but an island in space?

In my experience,' he told me, 'if you run away from a thing just because you don't like it you don't know what you find either. Now running to a thing, that's a different matter, but what would you want to run to?

The humans have a curious force they call ambition. It drives them, and, through them, it drives us. This force which keeps them active, we lack. Perhaps, in time, we machines will acquire it.

Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's?